FAA Rules about PEDs

Posted by Ann Sattley on Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

I don’t like to fly. It doesn’t make me sick, and I’m not scared of it. The trouble is that it feels too much like being at the DMV (or BMV, as it is called in Indiana). It’s too much government for my taste.

Some people appreciate government involvement and believe the government when they say everything is for your safety. “You are being monitored for your safety.” Since when does being monitored make me safer?

Anyway, airports are full of nonsense machines, gadgets, personnel, and rules to make you safer. Remember the Alec Baldwin story? He was kicked off of a flight for playing Words With Friends. Of course, there are two sides to the story, but none of this would have happened if some of these rules were revisited.

Does being on a cell phone really cause a plane to lose communication and navigation abilities? Sometimes the story is different, but that’s what we’re led to believe — that these devices interfere with the safe operation of the plane. Some people are even arrested for using their “devices.”

Well, there’s good news. The FAA has announced plans to revisit their rules. It’s a governmental panel doing the reviewing, so I’m not sure how sensible they will be in their determinations. I obviously think that people can deal with an hour or two without their phones. That’s not the issue. The issue is that we don’t need to be “controlled” in this manner if there is nothing truly dangerous about the devices. Maybe the FAA will get up to speed with new devices and change their rules soon.

Related posts:

  1. Against the Rules to Go Outside
  2. Would Having No Rules Be So Bad?
  3. Why Can They Break the Rules?
  4. Beach Rules

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 comments
  Livefyre
Newest | Oldest
BrooksAdams
BrooksAdams

There is actually a tremendous amount of literature on this subject. You can find a lot of scholarship in the trade publications, Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, among others. There was an abundance of caution - certainly for too long - on this subject, because there were many unknowns. Cell phones do emit varying degrees of signal strength and there was a lot of concern about the massive increase in signals being emitted with phones becoming commodities. Planes are bombarded by wireless signals all the time, so on the surface the rules are silly. Now, after years of study and research, the FAA and industry are lightening up. It's a slow process, sure, but in time practicality will prevail. The real reason they want you to turn your stuff off is in the unlikely event of an emergency, they want people to be alert to instructions. As a very frequent flier who witnesses a lot of rude and tuned-out people, I think this is a perfectly acceptable rule. Allowing unlimited phone use during these times would be a disaster from an operational standpoint. No airline states anymore that the phones my cause interference. They just say their rules are that anything with an on/off switch be off for the first 15,000 feet up  and the last 15,000 feet down.